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What are your challenging conversations? We all have them—delivering (or receiving) a performance review, leading a dysfunctional team, negotiating a raise, dealing with a strong disagreement… I’m sure you have your own.

A big part of what makes these conversations challenging is how we feel when we’re having them—defensive, unsure, angry, demoralized, frightened (insert your favorite not-so-positive adjective here).

Now, imagine these conversations as scenes in an improv performance. (If you need help, jump over to YouTube and watch a couple of clips from “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”). What if—as an improviser—you could play, build, create, riff (fill in your own positive verb here) with everything happening around you?

Well, you can, because every human being has the ability to improvise. Without it we never would have learned to talk, or walk, or make up games on a playground—kids are incredible improvisers, and that natural ability never goes away. But as adults, we can and do become pretty “scripted” in how we perform the “scenes” (the conversations and relationships) of our lives and work. But if you start working on improvising again—walk or talk in a new way, ask a question when you would normally say nothing or argue, use different body language, etc. —you can continue to invent who you are, what you do, how you do it, and how you feel, see, think, and respond. You gain access to a much broader range of options in any conversation, challenging or otherwise.

So I’m suggesting that you perform every conversation, every interaction as an improvisational scene, in which you are both a performer and a director. How? Here are some of the fundamentals from the improviser’s toolbox that you can use to make your challenging conversations more productive, satisfying, and waaaay less stressful:

So, give this a try—eventually it won’t be necessary to say the words, “yes, and”; because it’s the action of accepting the offer and building with it that matters. But start with the words this week—and when someone says or does something at work that throws you off balance, notice it. Then smile and breathe. “Yes-and” it.